Accessibility Issues in HTML5 A Comparison of HTML5 Websites and Those Coded in Earlier Versions

Abstract

It is estimated that by 2020 there could be as many as 4 million visually impaired or blind people living in the UK. These visually impaired or blind people will use assistive technologies such as screen readers to access website content on the internet. Currently the governing body of the internet, the World Wide Web Consortium has released and continues to develop a new standard of the HTML markup language which is used to code website content. This new HTML standard, HTML 5 has been heralded as a new semantically correct markup language. HTML 5 should be more accessible to users of assisted technologies and should also facilitate the incorporation into websites of rich internet applications and other media in a more accessible way. However the Royal National Institute for Blind People (RNIB) have suggested that the opposite may be proving to be true and that HTML 5 websites may be more inaccessible than websites coded in earlier versions of HTML. This study employs a mixed methods methodology, including screen reader accessibility testing and web developer interviews. This methodology will establish the accessibility of HTML 5 coded websites and prove or disprove the hypothesis of the RNIB while adding granularity and perspective to the results of the testing.